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Home / News / New alliance to transform the lives of people with serious long-term mental health issues

New alliance to transform the lives of people with serious long-term mental health issues

The Lambeth Integrated Personalised Support Alliance (IPSA) will offer people who currently go into long-term, expensive hospital rehabilitation wards or registered care homes the chance to live more independently in their own flat in the community.

The IPSA launches in April and offers personalised care and support to improve people’s lives, offering early intervention before they get into repeated crisis and require hospital treatment. The aim is to help people who use the services recover and stay well, participate on an equal footing in daily life and make their own choices.

The alliance is made up of five partners – the charities Thames Reach and Certitude, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), Lambeth Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) and Lambeth Council. It’s part of a collaborative approach in the borough which brings together voluntary sector providers, health professionals, commissioners and the people using the services to devise a new way of offering services. At the heart of this new approach is a desire to see people with mental health issues as equal partners in their recovery, rather than defining them by their mental ill-health and by their use of services.

Helping people recover and stay well, participate on an equal footing in daily life and make their own choices.

The IPSA is looking to obtain accommodation from a number of sources. These include social housing providers, by purchase on the open market and by negotiating with existing supported housing providers to extend their schemes. The aim is to provide a range of accommodation – self-contained and shared, and with and without integral support – to support a new offer in which people have increased choice and control over the type of support they receive and also where they live.

Aisling Duffy, Chair of the Alliance Leadership Team, said: “Recognising people’s strengths and abilities is a way to empower individuals to make their own choices about the support they receive. We are excited to be part of this new approach which will give people the opportunity to be central to their recovery journey.’’